The Mexican middle class --
intelligent, often artistic free-thinkers -- are the ones who have been
stifled the most by the Mexican government’s war on organized crime and
the violence of those criminal groups.

After a year in Mexico City, Julieta just did not give money to vagrants, no matter how pitiful their condition.

But outside the Rising Sun there was a man who had been in
Nueva Lapuerta since she was a teenager who had lost both his legs on
the train in Veracruz. The cops knew he was illegal but no one was cold
enough to send him back. Sometimes they extorted him, but never sent
him home.

Every morning he sold El Diario and El Centro and she
bought those blood-drenched Mexican periodicals with no intention of
reading a word or even daring to look at their gory covers.

She liked that he tried—sat on damp cardboard and smiled
and moved using his hands. In her memory all the beggars of DF had all
their faculties and yet still threatened and cursed if she didn't give
them 10 pesos when she only had 20. But here on the border Juan Lago
sold his newspapers sad-eyed but smiling, so she bought one that
morning and unlocked the bar while he said, “What are you doing,
Julieta? You should be in bed with that thing.”

“David doesn't bring home the money, so someone has to,”
she said without looking over at him, just fumbling with the five
locks.

“You keep dancing and the baby will fall right out of you.”

“Juanito, you know I 'm just teaching the girls. I don't dance anymore.”

She got the locks open but he said, “Why bother?” That stopped her.

“In Mexico City every month the Moiseyev Corps would come
through. Now that Nueva Lapuerta is bigger I think we’re ready for that
kind of thing. But I want the girls who are interested to know what
they’re seeing.”

“What’s a Moiseyev?”

“Oh, a famous Russian ballet corp.”

“Ah,
Julieta, Julieta, Nueva Lapuerta will never be ready for something like
that no matter how big this damned city is.”

Julieta folded her arm over her chest. They rested on her
belly. She looked down at Juan through big eyelashes and wide eyes like
a character in an art deco painting, and she clucked her tongue like a
hen.

“Why do YOU bother?” she said.

“Suicide is a sin,” he said, without a moment’s thought, or the appearance of sarcasm.

She laughed.

“Yes. There’s that, too.”

“How about you teach me to dance?” He lifted himself up on
his hands and shook in a way that would’ve struck her as grotesque if
she wasn’t so familiar with him.

“I don’t think you’d look so good in a tutu, Juanito.”

She walked inside the bar and turned the lights on.

*****

One by one or two at a time the girls arrived like they
did every other day in the summer and they changed and giggled in fits
in the girl's bathroom of Nueva Lapuerta's oldest bar, which had been
started by a couple from New Orleans in much better times than this but
had ended up in her boyfriend's hands some time before they stared
dating while she was away at University.

The girls lined up and quit giggling because even at 23
she was a feared teacher when she needed to be, and they all understood
that that they were there for a reason.

Seasons don't matter much in Nueva Lapuerta. The heat is
always somewhat sticky, and the young dancers took water breaks but
couldn't stop the sweat from forming wet on their foreheads and
staining the underarms of their outfits.

Julieta wanted to dance with them, and felt frustrated
that she couldn't. She even tied on her ballet shoes before every
class, but all she could do were the warm-up stretches.

She drank her water and watched, though, and thought how
wonderful it is that her son or daughter, whichever it would be, was
absorbing through the lining of her uterus the adagios and rhythmic
practice pieces that she played over the Rising Sun's speaker systems.

She divided the dancers into three levels, each watched
over by an older girl. All three danced to the same music, but danced
different steps. They all wanted to learn modern, but first you need
foundations.

She leaned forward in her chair and called to Irina
Mondragón to hold her position so she could twist her left foot
forward. But as she stood up, a man walked into the bar. Her eyes took
long to adjust. First she noticed he was fairly overweight in a simple
green polo shirt and jeans. Then she saw his face. He wasn't physically
very ugly but his mouth had an aggressive hook to it that frightened
her.

“Get me a Pacifico.”

“We're closed,” she said.

“Isn't this the Rising Sun?”

“Yes, but the bar is closed.”

He began walking toward her. The girls had all stopped
dancing and abandoned their positions. They stood rigid and watched him
advance.

“And isn't it owned by David Navarro who lives at Independencia 144 in Colonia Guerrero?”

“Yes,” she said. “But we're closed.”

He did not stop walking. Closer and closer. In front of her he was massive. She was short anyway, and he was tall.

Less than a foot from her, he stopped, looked first at her
belly, then at her breasts, and she shied at the feeling of his breath
on her face.

“And you're pregnant?”

She paused for a moment and her courage slunk away.

“Yes.”

Back to her eyes. He met her and held her with a look that was a choke hold and she felt as though she were asphyxiating.

“You are lucky for that.” And he walked away.

She didn't move; didn't breathe until he left the bar. It
wasn't until the door slammed behind him that she could hear the music
again. She turned to the girls, who were all still.

“OK. Well. What are you waiting for?”

They started their steps again, but everything was
different, weaker, meaningless. She sat down at the bar and took a deep
drink of water and wished she could drink tequila again and said,
“Irina, watch your damn foot or you're going to break your ankle.”

*****

Two days later she went to the Rising Sun at 9:30 a.m. and
didn't say hello to Juan just walked inside and sat there and waited
until a few minutes before 11 but not a single student showed up.

And at 11 when the class should have been ending, she said to the empty bar, “Well, so much for Moiseyev.”

And then she cried.

Zach
Lindsey is an American author and journalist. Formerly a U.S.-Mexico
border correspondent for Reporters Without Borders, he currently works
for the Express-Times in Easton, Pennsylvania. He’s the author of one
novel and an editor for Atheist Alliance International. More of his
projects can be seen at http://www.facebook.com/closeandfaraway.